Brochures are a great way to sell your company and promote your products or services. With more pages and space for information than other forms of advertising, brochures allow you to provide your customers with all the information they need to decide whether or not your company is the one they want to use. Below are 5 of the most crucial areas that we believe you should consider before getting your work printed that will help your brochure be the best it can be and reduce the chances of any problems occurring.
An engaging cover
The cover of the brochure can make or break your brochure before a customer even reads through it. The front page is what every customer will see and engage with first, leaving your customers with their initial impression of your business and hopefully wanting to find out more. It should be enticing and make them want to turn the page and read more in-depth about what it is that you provide – even if the rest of the brochure is amazing no one will see it otherwise. Great ways to make a cover enticing include:
- Promote a special offer.
- Use a strong heading and a clear image that shows what you provide.
- Highlight key pages in the brochure that customers can turn to for specific information.
Borders bleed
The bleed area is an often overlooked part of any printing work. The bleed area is a part of printing where the print goes beyond the trimmed area of a page, this helps to stop any errors in the process that may occur at the edges of the printed material. With this in mind, make sure that you set up allowances around each of your pages, 5mm is normally enough, so that no text or images are cut off.
Proof read
This is not restricted to just printing, any form of writing should always be proof read. With printing this is even more crucial as once the process is done it cannot be changed – remember, this is something will go out to all your customers and possibly judge you on. If they spot an obvious spelling mistake, repeated word or other mistake they may feel you are not a reliable company to use and go elsewhere. Here are some tips to help you proof read your content:
- Read through your work at least 2 or 3 times.
- Read your work out loud, this will often help pick up and highlight simple mistakes or poor choices of wording.
- Ask someone else to read through your work. Someone who did not write the body of text is more likely to spot mistakes.
Only print what you need
While you may be tempted to print as many copies of your brochure as possible and hand them out to everyone you meet, this may not be the best idea. Consider a realistic approach to your printing and opt for smaller numbers, targeting those you suspect are likely to definitely read your brochure. If you find that you have plenty of brochures left after a marketing stint you have likely printed too many copies and potentially wasted money – it is always better to hold back at first and then print more as you find that they are needed.
Consider print ready artwork
A final point to consider is making sure that your artwork is in a form that we can readily print. This is more for our benefit than yours but can help save you time too if we have to ask you to make changes. Suitable set-ups for your artwork include:
- A print ready PDF converted from Office, Illustrator, inDesign or Photoshop files.
- Artwork that is sized proportionately.
- Images that are 300 dpi and embedded.
- Fonts that are no smaller 6pt are best suited but smaller can be used for certain circumstances, such as small-print.
If you have any questions about our printing process or wish to discuss any other printing needs that you may have, feel free to contact us on 01603 488001 or send an email to websales@col-print.co.uk.
